Indian Perspective on Psychotherapy: Cultural Issues

India is in a state of transition between massively transformed ‘modern’ lifestyles on one hand and the influence of traditional values and customs on the other. In view of the current realities of urbanization, migration, globalisation and societal transformation, the mental health treatment needs have become complex. The article highlights the existing mental health issues and traces the development of various psychotherapeutic techniques in India. An effort has been made to look into the basic tenets of the Indian culture which have a bearing on the conceptualisation and practical application of psychotherapy in the Indian setting. The cross-cultural relevance and adaptability of western psychotherapies in multi-ethnic and collectivistic Asian culture are discussed. In view of the differences between the eastern and western approaches to mental health, challenges in culturally-responsive adaptations are highlighted. It is seen that psychological interventions among masses are beneficial if indigenous approaches based on paradigms like themes from Gita, are cross-fertilized with western psychotherapy. However, there is a need to generate empirical evidence for indigenization of psychological treatments.     

Motivations and Constraints of Moving Abroad for Indian Students

Faced with a situation in which countries compete for international students, it becomes especially important to understand students’ preferences regarding migration behaviour. This paper looks at the determinants of international mobility intentions in the specific situation of Indian students in sciences and engineering. It uses the collected data from the survey held among students at five Indian universities and complements it with qualitative data from interviews. We looked at the role of students’ personal and family background, university-related factors, their social network and preferences for living location in their motivations for moving abroad. The type of university and field of studies work as strong predictors for students’ desired move abroad. Whether a student plans a career in academia or wants to work in a company has a decisive influence on where they see themselves in the near future. Professional aspects are confirmed to be the most prominent in the decision-making regarding international mobility. People who place high importance on work-related factors are more mobile, while people who place higher importance on family-friendly environment and public safety prefer staying in India. International student mobility is obviously a family decision. Parents’ support is crucial for moving abroad, in moral as well as in financial terms. Normally, obligations towards family are put in the first place ahead of potential individual initiatives.     

Psychical Transmissions: Freud,Spiritualism, and the Occult

This paper explores Freud’s reflection on telepathy, a reflection generally dismissed as a marginal or even slightly embarrassing aspect of his writings. Ernst Jones’s influential Life and Work of Sigmund Freud exemplifies best this marginalization as it rigorously examines Freud’s consideration of telepathy but frames it as a paradoxical feature of the latter’s character or as proof of the difficulty, even for men of genius, to overcome irrational superstitions. The paper offers a historical perspective on the conflict between Freud’s intellectual engagement with telepathy and the scientific community’s rejection of occult beliefs generally associated with the spiritualist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The author argues that the treatment of Freud’s reflection on telepathy as a result of superstition not only fails to recognize the caution he undertook within his inquiry into the occult but also omits the important questions that motivated his investigations. Ultimately, Freud’s probes into the possibilities of certain occult phenomena such as telepathy had less to do with superstitions than with a critical examination of the limits of communication as they demonstrated the need within psychoanalysis to reevaluate certain unexplained transmissions of meaning.     

Mediational role of academic motivation in the association between school self-concept and school achievement among Indian adolescents in Canada and India

The present study examined the mediational role of academic motivation in the association between school self-concept and school achievement among 355 Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada and 363 Indian adolescents in India. Surveys were administered among Grades 9?C12 students in Canada and India to assess their academic self-concepts, academic motivation, and academic achievement. Bootstrapped tests of simultaneous multiple indirect effects were conducted to determine the unique ability of each putative mediator??intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation??to account for the effect of school self-concept on overall school GPA for Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada and Indian adolescents in India. Mediational analyses revealed the mediational roles of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the association between school self-concept and school achievement for Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada, while intrinsic motivation solely mediated the relations between school self-concept and school achievement for Indian adolescents in India. Amotivation was not a significant mediator for both the Indian immigrant and Indian adolescents. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Numbers in Nirvana: How the 1872-1921 Indian censuses helped operationalise ‘Hinduism’

A debate has recently re-emerged about whether Hinduism in India is a colonial invention or antedates European colonialism. Drawing on the Indian censuses of 1872-1921, I argue that Hinduism is both. It has complex linkages both to European colonialism and to indigenous Indian culture. Traditions like Hinduism are better conceived of as a negotiated territory between factions instead of solely being the creation of one dominant group.     

Relationship Between Academic Motivation and Mathematics Achievement Among Indian Adolescents in Canada and India

This study examined the relationships between academic motivation—intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, amotivation—and mathematics achievement among 363 Indian adolescents in India and 355 Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and amotivation were not statistically significantly related to mathematics achievement among Indian adolescents in India. In contrast, both intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation were statistically significantly related to mathematics achievement among Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada. While intrinsic motivation was a statistically significant positive predictor of mathematics achievement among Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada, extrinsic motivation was a statistically significant negative predictor of mathematics achievement among Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada. Amotivation was not statistically significantly related to mathematics achievement among Indian immigrant adolescents in Canada. Implications of the findings for pedagogy and practice are discussed.     

The Non-Indian Therapist Working with American Indian Clients

Abstract

The lack of success non-Indian therapists have had in working with American Indian clients has perpetuated a repetitive cycle of poor mental health services with this population. Although we cannot change the historic distrust that exists, we can begin to understand cultural differences and how they can impact treatment to obtain positive results. Acknowledgment of these differences can promote trust, a core ingredient that must be established between the client and therapist. This paper offers guidelines to assist the non-Indian therapist in working with the American Indian client.     

Women in Cultural Transition: Suicidal Behavior in South African Indian Women

Young South African Indian women are a population with relatively high rates of suicidal behavior. This article presents three illustrative case studies of nonfatal suicidal behavior by South African Indian women. The cases are discussed in relation to a review of epidemiological, historical, and sociocultural perspectives on South African Indian women. It is argued that suicidal behaviors in this group can be understood in the context of sociocultural transition. Transitional tensions between traditional Indian culture and Westernization have an impact on traditional gendered power relations and generate conflicts that have intrapsychic and interpersonal consequences for women and for men. These in turn may have adverse effects on marital functioning, quality of life, and specific aspects of emotional functioning, which have been identified as precursors of suicidal behavior. The case studies are discussed with reference to gender narratives. Implications for prevention, intervention, and future research are discussed.     

Pedestrian temporal gap acceptance behavior at unsignalized intersections in Kanpur,India

Vehicle heterogeneity, lack of lane discipline, lack of infrastructure facilities, and weak enforcement of traffic rules are all characteristics of Indian traffic. These characteristics make Indian roads difficult for non-motorized road users, especially pedestrians. Most intersections in urban areas in India are unsignalized, which results in complex interactions between pedestrians and motorists. This study aims to understand pedestrian gap acceptance behavior at unsignalized intersections in India under heterogeneous traffic conditions. Pedestrian data were collected from six unsignalized intersections in the city of Kanpur. The critical gap was estimated using Wu’s (2006) macroscopic model, and then the effects of several variables on the critical gap were studied. A discrete choice model (binary logit model) was developed to understand the choice of accepted and rejected vehicular gaps depending on traffic, road, and peer pedestrian characteristics. The mean critical headway was 3.76 s using Wu’s model. The behavioral analysis revealed that pedestrians accept rolling gaps to cross unsignalized intersections, resulting in a reduction of the size of the critical gap. The adoption of rolling gap behavior can be attributed to the unyielding behavior of motorists, which forces pedestrians to accept short vehicular gaps in the traffic stream.     

SETI & METI: An Indian Perspective

Critiques consider Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence (METI) immoral for various reasons. This article is a response to SETI-METI from an Indian perspective, both classical Hindu and Roman Catholic. The article begins with a brief account of what the space programme in India looks like today. Then this article makes two claims: (1) the existence or non-existence of extraterrestrials is not a threat to the Indian mind as the Indian worldview provides sufficient tools to accommodate extraterrestrials; plus (2) Roman Catholic moral theology should reframe its ethical thinking with an inclusive cosmic paradigm to embrace the extraterrestrials.     

Cross-Cultural Evaluation of the International Affective Picture System on an Indian Sample

The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) is widely used in emotion and attention research. Currently, there is neither a standard database of affective images for use in research with Indian population nor data on the way people from India respond to emotional pictures in terms of different dimensions. In the present study, we investigated whether self-reported Indian ratings are comparable to the original normative ratings (based on a North American sample) to evaluate its usability in Indian research context. The ratings were obtained from a sample of eighty Indian participants (age range?=?18 to 29 years, M _age?=?23.7, SD?=?2.67, 45 % females) on a stratified representative sample of 100 IAPS pictures. Similar to the normative data collected from the North American sample in the original IAPS database, the ratings were collected across three dimensions – valence (how pleasant/attractive or unpleasant/aversive), arousal (how calm or excited was the intensity of activation), and dominance (how controlling). Our results indicate similarities in valence ratings, but differences in arousal and dominance ratings between the Indian and the North American samples. The relationship between arousal and valence showed a similar (but less curved) boomerang shaped distribution seen with the North American sample. Unlike the North American sample, slopes were higher and intercepts were different for the Indian sample. However, the Indian sample also showed positivity offset and negative bias like the North American sample. These affective ratings show a fair amount of similarity but care is needed especially with arousal values in using these pictures for research with Indian population. While there are subtle differences in the relationship between different affective dimensions, there are also major similarities across cultures in affective judgments.     

An Analysis of Factors Influencing the International Migration of Indian Nurses

Based on our survey conducted in Tamil Nadu, this paper analyses the characteristics of Indian migrant nurses and the factors influencing their migration. India is considered the second largest exporter of nurses after the Philippines. Many Indian nurses have migrated to work in OECD countries, the Gulf countries and some ASEAN countries. While Indian nurses are migrating overseas to fill shortages at their destinations, India has itself been suffering from an acute scarcity of nurses since its independence in 1947. Therefore, the large scale of nurse migration is a serious threat to the Indian healthcare system. The results of the survey imply that international migration by nurses can be explained in part by the gap between the private sector and the public sector in terms of salary and working environment. Since the impact of social status on the migration decisions of nurses has lessened, economic factors are the crucial determinant of international migration of nurses. Policy intervention in this area is the necessary first step to solving this long-standing problem. The priority in any policies formulated should be given to nurses working in the private sector whose salaries are considerably lower than those in the public sector and whose voices are unheard.     

Spatial patterns of Indian serial burglars with relevance to geographical profiling

Earlier studies in Western countries have shown remarkably consistent spatial patterns in serial offenders, mainly for serious crimes notably serial killing and rape, but also (although with less clear patterns) for burglary. The universality of such spatial patterns are of theoretical interest in contributing to our understanding of criminal spatial behaviour and have practical significance for the possibility of using geographic profiling in developing countries. As such, burglars in India provide a particularly interesting test of the generality of the observed spatial consistencies. Information was therefore obtained on the offence location choices of 30 burglars, committing 150 offences in the Rourkela and Keonjhar districts of India. The home to crime distances were compared with those from developed countries, revealing similar but slightly shorter distances. In addition, the domocentricity of criminal spatial activity, reflected in the ‘marauder’ model (Canter & Gregory 1994) was tested through examination of the Canter Circle hypothesis, the mean interpoint distances (as they related to average distances from home), and the home base ‘search costs’ using a geographical profiling system (Dragnet). Overall the study found that the spatial patterns of the sample of Indian Burglars were not very different from their counterparts in the UK, North America and Australia, showing that the areas in which an offender is active tend to be shaped by, and, relatedly, close to, where he or she lives, irrespective of the part of the world in which this is. These results suggest that geographical profiling systems such as Dragnet would be productively used on the Indian sub‐continent. The results also contribute to our understanding of possible universalities in offender spatial behaviour. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the Indian

To many Anglos, Indian people are Wild West relics, out of step with the modern world, silent, inscrutable. Genuine communication with Indian people can be facilitated by shattering these false myths, understanding the Indian from within his own culture, and responding to his own interpretation of the needs and problems encountered in his relationships with white Americans.     

Ethical Specificities: Repositioning Indian Ethics

The essay is a review discussion of Indian Ethics in the context of a recent volume of essays. The attempt is to identify some of the issues that are now on the frontier of Indian ethics or that are likely to appear on that frontier in the coming years. Sasheej Hegde  teaches sociology at the University of Hyderabad, India. His work straddles many disciplines and sociohistorical settings, although in recent times he has been concerned with formulating a comparative agenda on law and ethics.     

The Meaning of Life in Indian Philosophy: A Contemporary Reconstruction

In this paper, I would like to discuss the meaning of life in Indian philosophy. All Indian philosophies are philosophies of life. Indian philosophy is not merely an intellectual activity but has practical application which enables men to lead an enlightened life. Any philosophy, either Indian or Western which makes no difference to human life, is not a philosophy. The human life always strives towards freedom, duty, wisdom, well-being, etc. These are the noble values in Indian philosophy that play a very vital role in shaping the meaning of life. All schools of Indian philosophy give importance to individual freedom for self-realization. Every school of Indian philosophy prescribes its way of overcoming ignorance, and thereby overcoming pain, to achieve the goal of life. Thus, every human being has to look within, understand his nature, and figure out her or his way to self-realization. The way to reach this goal includes selfless love, service to others, self-control, and self-purification. Because of their practicality, each system of Indian philosophy is as new today as it was 3000 years ago. These are the ideas which we can find in Vivekananda, Gandhi, Aurobindo, and many others. All these philosophical schools/thinkers hold that philosophy and practical life are necessarily integrated.

     

Perspectives of Indian Traditional and Allopathic Professionals on Religion/Spirituality and its Role in Medicine: Basis for Developing an Integrative Medicine Program

Allopathic medical professionals in developed nations have started to collaborate with traditional, complementary, and alternative medicine (TCAM) to enquire on the role of religion/spirituality (r/s) in patient care. There is scant evidence of such movement in the Indian medical community. We aim to understand the perspectives of Indian TCAM and allopathic professionals on the influence of r/s in health. Using RSMPP (Religion, Spirituality and Medicine, Physician Perspectives) questionnaire, a cross-sectional survey was conducted at seven (five TCAM and two allopathic) pre-selected tertiary care medical institutes in India. Findings of TCAM and allopathic groups were compared. Majority in both groups (75 % of TCAM and 84.6 % of allopathic practitioners) believed that patients’ spiritual focus increases with illness. Up to 58 % of TCAM and allopathic respondents report patients receiving support from their religious communities; 87 % of TCAM and 73 % of allopaths believed spiritual healing to be beneficial and complementary to allopathic medical care. Only 11 % of allopaths, as against 40 % of TCAM, had reportedly received ‘formal’ training in r/s. Both TCAM (81.8 %) and allopathic (63.7 %) professionals agree that spirituality as an academic subject merits inclusion in health education programs (p = 0.0003). Inclusion of spirituality in the health care system is a need for Indian medical professionals as well as their patients, and it could form the basis for integrating TCAM and allopathic medical systems in India.     

Working with Families from the Indian Sub-Continent: An Indo-German Experience*

Whereas most Western European therapists and clients consider emotional distance and abstinence as desirable and conducive in the therapeutic process, this may not always be the case with clients from India. Cultural components such as the contrast between linear and cyclic world-views and the traditional view of the psychologist as an advisor in India present a challenge to professionals with a Western background. Some factors such as the situation of women in society and seemingly too close familiy ties can mean that a Western therapist fails to promote the changes an Indian client is desiring for his or her family. However, besides cultural awareness and caution, one of the most helpful tools in work across cultures is curiosity in its most positive sense and the readiness to be surprised by ones’ clients.I would like to thank all my Indian colleagues who supported and advised me in my work in India.     

Theosophy and the origins of the Indian National Congress

Conclusion No doubt the Western conceptualization of the East generally served to subjugate the Indians to their colonial rulers, but it also provided a set of beliefs to which disgruntled Western occultists and radicals, and also Western-educated Indians, could appeal in order to defend the dignity and worth of Indian religion and society. No doubt the founding theosophists had no intention of promoting political radicalism on the subcontinent, but the discourse they helped to establish provided others with an instrument they could use for political ends. Indeed, the formation of the Indian National Congress shows how Western-educated Indians were able to join with Hume to promote their political ends using the particular advantages that involvement in the Theosophical Society had given them. The founders of the Indian National Congress relied on the contacts and commitments generated within the Society; they relied on a capacity for, and a belief in, cooperation, both at an all-India level and also between Indian nationalists and liberal Britons; and they relied on a background discourse that emphasized the strength and claims of India, its heritage and religion. Although we have focused on the origins of the Indian National Congress, the process we have uncovered continued to operate for much of the nationalist era. Annie Besant, like Hume and Sinnett, used theosophy to resolve the Victorian crisis of faith after she had spent some time investigating spiritualist phenomena, and her theosophy combined with her radicalism to take her into the nationalist movement, where she became the only Western woman ever to be elected as president of the Indian National Congress (Taylor 1992). Gandhi (1948), like Malabari, Rao, and Sen, used theosophy to help restore his pride in his native culture to support his vision of ancient India as a vital, rational, and moral society. British occultists such as Besant and Western-educated Indians such as Gandhi turned to theosophy for different reasons, but once they had done so, they shared practices and intellectual commitments that helped sustain the nationalist movement.